The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Olusegun ‘Messiah’ Obasanjo moves again

    Baba, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo is fondly called, has been quiet lately. Not known to be inconspicuous and invisible, even his quietude is a rumbling, roaring presence for those who ought to know. Though since he fired his ‘toxic’ missive at his estranged godson, President Goodluck Jonathan, a few months ago, he has retreated from the political sphere. But be not deceived that he has been removed from Nigeria’s political scene or machinations if you like.

    In fact, while Nigerians and indeed the entire world is carried away by the Chibok girls abduction saga in the northeast state of Borno, Baba’s attention is riveted toward the northernmost of the northwest states, Jigawa. He is reported to be on a kurukere political shuttle to Dutse, the rustic capital of Jigawa State. Any neophyte politician in Nigeria would know that Baba’s silence on the “Bringback the girls” campaign is the loudest statement and is a cause for worry for his political opponents. Baba is not one to keep mute when world leaders like Obama, Hilary Clinton, Cameron, Pope Francis and so on are speaking on an issue about his country.

    Well, unless of course Baba is on to something more important than the issue of the day. And his detractors think he is. Recall that he has been absent at state functions recently, the last of which was the World Economic Forum (Africa) held in Abuja last weekend. But he has been very visible in Dutse where he posed for a picture with numerous teenage girls (dressed in hijab) of Government Girls Secondary School (not Chibok) in Kudai, Jigawa State. He is said to have adopted the school. The young girls who flock around Baba in the bold photograph immediately remind one of the abducted Chibok girls, except that while these ones are gay, the others are morose. Think nothing of the coinciding (conflicting?) images but remember that Baba is a master of the Nigerian art and his imprints loom large on this shambolic edifice called Nigeria.

    Hardball is doing all this jiu-jitsu just to establish the fact that Baba’s ominous silence and peregrinations up north have been a cause for indigestion for not a few of his party members, especially those in the camp of his disanointed son, the sitting president. Baba’s Jigawa shuttles are said to have so emboldened the state governor, Sule Lamido, to go beyond mere splashing campaign posters in Abuja to preparing to give the president a fight pound-for-pound and neighbour-to-neighbour in the upcoming Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary. In a contest being planned to be a fait accompli for President Jonathan, any serious contestant would be deemed ‘dangerous’ in the light of the hullabaloo (of global proportions) weighing down the presidency.

    While you may want to accuse Hardball of being a busy body growing gray hair on a small family matter of the PDP, you may worry if you recall that Baba, the ‘messiah’, is about it once more, looking for a ‘president’ to anoint on our behalf. You will agree with me that Nigerians don’t want another president from Baba because the poor soldier he sent out to the war front has not returned… because he is a bad ‘chooser’ of presidents, he should leave us to make our own choice this time, we beg of him.

  • BOGOF: Circus Jona

    BOGOF — Buy One and Get One Free — it is Circus Jona, prime entertainment unlimited! Won’t you try us, with our money-back guarantee, should we fail to amuse and excite, with the most rib-cracking hilarity you ever saw?

    It’s confirmed: we are the world’s most entertaining couple!

    Enter, Show 1.

    I’m the man, the Nebuchadnezzar, the army general, the dictator and the “muscler”-in-chief, if I really want to be.  If I use even 50 per cent of my humongous power, the town would be a hubbub. But I don’t want to. I prefer to be humble and modest, you know, the debonair uncle next door.

    But how do they pay me back?  They feel my gentility is stupidity!  Imagine, the loud mouths.  Because a few blokes stole a few millions, ordinary stealing, they now shout and scream it is corruption!  Can you imagine?  To add insult to injury, they now say I should account for it: me, commander-in-chief!  Is it because I am so modest and humble?  Insult!

    Then, they say some lunatics stole some girls.  The names of the girls we don’t know.  Their pictures we don’t see.  Even their mothers sef, they probably are ghosts.  So, how can I start looking for something I’m not even convinced is lost?  Now, they have started a campaign: abusing me, spoiling my name and giving the enemy media of the West the temerity to call me names: clueless, distracted, incompetent.  Chai!  One even claimed I was “unfortunately named”!  What have I done to deserve all these?

    Anyway, my God is alive and my pastors, prayer warriors, are alive and praying hot prayers.  These newspapers and television and radio and wires and internet and online media will soon hear from my God.  After all, there was a paper, which they called NEXT, which did nothing but attack me.  But where is NEXT today?  My God be praised, where is NEXT today?  As dead as dodo!  So, others, beware!  Touch not the Lord’s anointed.

    Enter, Show 2.

    I am she, the Prime One, Mother of the Nation, ambassador of peace, water that kills the fire of war — war, from where they share blood, chai!

    My country people, see me see trouble o!  Wetin I do sef?  I tried to help them look for their missing daughters, and they say I no know grammar!  Chai!  What have I done wrong?

    All I know is: there is God.  Everything we do, there is God.  What did I do wrong?  Boko Haram thief girls.  They say my husband should go find the girls.  My husband be Boko Haram?  Chai!  There is God.

    I even tried, I tried to help them find their missing girls.  I tried, call prinspal: come tell us what you know.  I tried, call my daughter, mother of the girls, I am their grandmother.  Yet, she no come.  Even the prinspal, na only she waka come.  Chai!  There is God.

    They say my husband no try.  As I tried to help, they say my own too much!  Wetin I go do now?  There is God oooooo! Chai!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • WEF: the prodigal and his N4b are separated

    The Goodluck Jonathan administration is peopled by half-empty grandiloquent popinjays. That is Hardball’s well-considered opinion and you could quote that freely. Now let us proceed to uphold our proposition. First the leading lights of the regime are people who have sojourned abroad. They were shipped home with the high expectation that they were some kind of technocrats who had answers to at least some, if not all the developmental pains bedeviling a fledgling country like Nigeria. But as it has turned out, or as it has been revealed, they really don’t grasp it. In fact they are miles away from the reality of Nigeria’s situation.

    Sometimes Hardball cannot help but have sympathy for them. They really cannot help themselves. They have their heads permanently screwed to an angle so that they are forever looking up towards the ceiling or the West if you prefer; (if only they are looking up to heaven). In other words, they are stiff-necked if you catch Hardball’s drift. They fancy themselves belonging to some rarefied Western clubs. They are jet-set – meaning that they are more airborne than on Nigeria’s humble roads. They love the luxury hotels of New York and Washington and London more than the seedy terra-firma of Abuja and Lagos. They cherish the company of some white-skin top-notch who humour them with some sexed-up ratings; some wangled ‘global’ awards and who convince them that they are the miracles out of Africa.

    But they are only adept at the current global economic slangs and jargons. At every turn they speak their hocus-pocus with so much relish and bravura. When we muster enough courage to ask questions or point at blinding incongruities littering our landscape, they browbeat us with more economic arcana and will only stop short at calling us illiterate. Such is our predicament in the last decade or so that we have had a quake of a motion yet we remain in situ.

    They know they have failed us woefully, they can see the house crumbling all around them yet they dig in stubbornly – as stubborn as that snout-mouthed creature often dead to its mucky forays. There is nothing doing but they live in abject denial of glaring facts, concocting fantabulous tales of ‘transformation’. But facts and reality keep haunting us all. For instance, no new jobs are being created; in fact the job space shrinks resulting in deathly scramble for a few dozen openings in our old colonial bureaucracy.

    In a country of over 150 million people, not one million can boast of clean, potable water. Cholera still ravages many parts of the country; leprosy rages, diabetes, kidney failure and even polio. All the diseases that have been eradicated in other climes seem to have found solace here. And what does the Ministry of Health do for instance: serial summitry as well at venues far removed from our diseased environments. Public awareness is a major weapon against diseases but not so in Nigeria. Pupils still sit on bare floor to study. All basic things of life elude us.

    Yet we would burn N4 billion in three days hosting ‘the world’ in a locked down ghost city. They gloat about pledges in million dollars as if we are a beggarly nation. It’s eerie isn’t it? In fact it’s so spooky Hardball wagers we must be in a ghost land.

     

  • An infection called arrogance

    Selective sanction was apparent as Ahmed Gulak lost his job in the presidency on April 29. Apart from his official role as an adviser on political affairs to President Goodluck Jonathan, he was an enthusiastic defender of the administration and a passionate promoter of a second term for Jonathan next year. His aggressively defensive voice was loud and clear whenever Jonathan’s critics and antagonists had anything to say against the president; and he seemed to be in the good books of party hierarchs until news of his removal from office changed all that.

    Surprisingly, not to say unbelievably, reports said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, while explaining the reason for the action against Gulak, declared that he only had himself to blame and mentioned two alleged faults, arrogance and irrational disposition.  With all due respect to the new PDP leader, it must be noted that Gulak, a lawyer and former legislator in Adamawa State, perhaps had good grounds for self-importance, given his closeness to Jonathan based on his contribution as director of mobilisation in the campaign leading to the president’s election in 2011.

    Moreover, reflecting his degree of involvement in Jonathan’s affairs, just before his sack he inaugurated the Goodluck Support Group (GSG) in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital. Ironically, this same mission led to his undoing as the governor, Godswill Akpabio, and the state chapter of the PDP reportedly accused him of associating with individuals opposed to the state government. He was said to have visited the state “to inaugurate a sectional and unknown Support Group in favour of our dear President without bothering to pay any courtesies to the state leadership of the party.” His role was described as “ignoble and contemptuous”.

    Gulak’s subsequent resignation on May 2 as national coordinator of the Goodluck Support Group provided sufficient evidence that he was experiencing a storm, although he reportedly gave no reason for his disengagement.

    On the allegation of arrogance, it is no news that highly positioned members of the PDP in particular, and those connected with them, are usually peacockish, which is to say that they are proudly power-conscious and carry the mentality to a nauseating extent. Consider the specific major example of Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, who has controversially snubbed the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, which is investigating the N10 billion chartered jets’ scandal linked with her.

    The lady is accused of blowing the money on flying in chartered Challenger 850 in her official capacity in the last three years; and further findings indicated that she allegedly chartered other jets, including a Global Express XRS, all pointing to insensitive wastefulness in the country’s oil and gas sector.

    Instructively, the probe is bogged down by alleged intransigence by Alison-Madueke and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu, who have been requested, without success, to provide information on the funding of the minister’s mode of air transport as well as possible enabling regulation. Not a word has been received from these individuals in response to the committee’s enquiries.

    Given such egregious exhibition of the arrogance of power, among others, should Gulak be faulted for allegedly showing symptoms of what looks like a PDP infection?

  • Expedition Maiduguri, by Dame Jonathan

    Expedition Maiduguri is not a movie; at least not yet. It’s not a stage play either and neither is it a musical nor a block-buster novel. It is neither of these but you may derive some fascination from the fact that it might just as well turn out to be any of these. Yes, Expedition, with no less a progenitor than the first woman of the land, has the fluid potency of stirring up an epic creative work in any genre of your picking; Hardball conjectures.

    Why, all the elements are so conjugated in this theme that all you need do is just to sit down and bend over his keyboard. Here are some teasers: Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State is currently in the news (worldwide) as the headquarters of the leading terrorist group in Africa –  the rampaging Boko Haram. This group’s influence, power and glory are on current global ascendancy. They raised the ante of their dastardly operations when mid-April they herded away over two hundred nubile school girls into the thick forests in the Northeast fringes where Nigeria shares borders with Cameroon and Chad. If you think such large number of little damsels held under the foul breath of forest thugs and miscreants for weeks is not enough material for an opus, fair enough.

    But what about combining the above scenario with the idea of the first wife raising a brigade of some well-fed, voluptuous women in the land on a rescue mission to the forests of Borno? This is what Hardball has given the above working title: Expedition Maiduguri. Of course you can carve more creative titles of your own can’t you?

    Apparently enraged by the ineffectuality of the military-cum-security combo combing the Sambisa forest, the First Lady over the weekend started a move of her own in this single-minded mission to free the girls. In a highly publicised (and give it to her, the most novel) initiative so far in this  search and rescue pastime, our daring Dame summoned some ‘big women’ to a roundtable and they summoned some government officials, including the head of the West African Examination Council (WAEC). This is the body that organised the exam the girls were supposedly writing at the time they were circumscribed. It was this WAEC man who displayed on the television the names and photos of the girls. He also explained how come the girls had to write their exams in a dangerous and highly volatile zone.

    Touched, or shall we say, moved by this fresh stream of information and of course inspired by the now viral protesting, our gallant Dame has threatened to take to the streets too and launch protests of her own. Not in the safe cities of Lagos, Abuja and London, but right in the war zones of Maiduguri. She harangued the Borno State governor and of course must have wrong-footed the security team by charging into it like a bull in china shop. In her blustery and indignation, she forgot that her husband was the number one, chief responsible officer and commander in chief of all the forces in the land.

    With a boast that she had never embarked on any venture that failed, would our Dame override every protocol and embark on this Expedition? You can bet that Hardball will be on top of it for you.

     

     

  • Fayose o, joke o o o o o o o o !

    Now, isn’t this Fayose a joke?

    Peter Ayodele Fayose is the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) governorship candidate for Ekiti State in the June 21 gubernatorial election. But that is not why he is a joke. To contest is his democratic right.

    But the joke comes from Fayose’s choice, in his own gubernatorial ticket. No crime, is it?

    Still, the oddity stands out. But you won’t know, until you examine all the particulars, vis-a-vis the contending tickets.

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) just released the list of Ekiti guber tickets and the list is quite instructive.

    Governor Kayode Fayemi, 49 and PhD, runs with Prof. Modupe Adelabu, 63 and PhD.

    Accord Party has Kole Ajayi, 46 and LLB, BL as its candidate.  He runs with Akinyemi Adeola, 41 and BSc.

    Opeyemi Bamidele, 51 and LLB, BL is the Labour Party’s candidate.  He runs with Mrs Bolanle Bruce, 47, who boasts of a Post-Graduate Diploma (PGD) in Journalism.

    And Fayose, the PDP candidate?  He is 53 and boasts of an HND.  But wait for his running mate: Joshua Olusola-Ojo, 80 and Grade 2 Teacher’s certificate!

    And all that in Ekiti’s fountain of knowledge where professors are half-a-penny and virtually no family is “made” until it produces its own PhD holder?  Fayose o, odd oooooooooooooo!

    But don’t be deceived. The same INEC statement that gave the low-down added the  caveat that parties had up till May 18 to substitute names of candidates.  So, aside from the high drama of hoisting an 80-year old, who by his age and rather modest academic qualification appears both physically and intellectually suited for such an articulate state and a demanding job, it is obvious that Fayose just put the name, pending the agreement, among stakeholders, on the actual candidate.

    That appears fair and smart enough. But what is outrageous is the level of in-your-face cynicism that Fayose has employed to hold down the space.

    On stark cynicism, Fayose appears on the same page with his party.  The controversy of his emergence is too recent to bear any re-telling.  Ditto for the funny haste with which his party jumped to endorse his candidature, as if he was the paragon of a candidate everyone should fear and envy.

    But lo! Fayose is damaged good, given the heavy baggage on his neck, easily comparable to the albatross on the neck of the sailor, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

    Still, Fayose gallops on the hustings, hardly saying what he would do but only tarring and discrediting what his electorate can see! Is that a joke taken too far?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

    But it is clear that if his party can present Fayose with his baggage, and it has high hopes that its liability would triumph, it is either the electorate are deemed idiots (which they are not) or that party has absolute contempt for voters.

    Who knows, the concert of cynics, party and candidate, may well have a joker up their sleeves.  And what might that be?  Well, with the famed federal might, you just might guess!

    For now, it’s only fair to hail the peculiar candidate: Fayose oo, joke oooooooooooooo!

     

  • The political bridge

    Hardball had described it as a bridge too far in reference to a world-War II tactical debacle of the Allied Forces in one of their battles. This was in February but let’s re-describe it as a political bridge, one that was conceived, berthed and initiated in the cauldron of political chicanery. We speak of the Second Niger Bridge (SNB) at Onitsha, which was in the news again over the weekend. Recall that this project of national importance and of particular emotional value to Ndigbo of the Southeast was for long something of a bait in the ruling party’s snare.

    Right from the era of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the SNB was an instrument for extracting votes from the people on the other side of the Niger. Not once did the hardy president dangle the SNB carrot and each time he reneged on his word. The last time in 2007, he did a last minute abracadabra by the bank of the old Niger River, purporting that he had awarded a contract. But it was a scam that is gaol-worthy in decent climes; he walked away gaily with it, not given to having much qualms.

    Then enters President Goodluck Jonathan: twice he has promised the bridge in the heat of electioneering and twice he has failed, perhaps forgotten. Early in the year, he was going to promise the people the bridge once again when he was reminded that he was becoming a parrot at promising things. Oh yes, yes, he said; we will build the bridge pronto! In two weeks, the ceremonial sud was turned with so much fanfare you would think the bridge was ready for use. There was so much colour, so much singing and dancing at the bank of the river that some mermaids may have joined in unknown to the mockers.

    But the ogbanje keeps going and coming. Last week, it was reported that work had to stop because someone forgot to do Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for such a massive project. Depending on who is doing it, that could take all of one year to accomplish. Official response is no, no, no; work is going on in earnest, but can you execute a bridge across a large body of water like the Niger without EIA?

     Perhaps it’s a confirmation of what some skeptics have suggested that work could not continue because there was never a provision for it in the budget, thus the need to buy time. That, they say, explains the hurriedly packaged Special Utility Vehicle (SUV) company for financing and executing the project. The contraption is known as Julius Berger and Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) Motorways Investment Company (JB-NMIC). By the sheer awkwardness of the name, you can see that this suv is as ungainly as a bad error.

    Senator Chris Ngige has also questioned this manner of Public-Private-Partnership (PPP), describing it as financial victimisation and marginalisation of Ndigbo. The project cost of about N120 billion is outrageous, he noted. But even more unthinkable is the 25- year duration of tolling the bridge. Imagine a people paying tolls on their major road for a quarter of a century while they still pay all sorts of taxes and levies daily? Ndigbo, why art thou so blest!

  • And Jonathan wept

    And Jonathan wept

    It looked like a classic case of raw emotionalism as President Goodluck Jonathan, ironically, made what may be considered an insensitive statement in connection with the death of Capt. Yusuf Sabo Sambo, who was Vice President Namadi Sambo’s immediate younger brother. The late Capt. Sambo, aged 58, died in a car accident in Abuja on April 27. Reports said his car ran into a tree and burst into flames; and that he was survived by his wife, three daughters and 10 siblings. Really sad!

    He was described as a seasoned pilot who had worked for the former Nigerian Airways and the Presidential Air Fleet. According to Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Vice President, Malam Umar Sani, who announced his death, “He has since been buried at the Apo cemetery, Abuja, according to Islamic rites. He was buried in the presence of former military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and several other dignitaries and sympathisers.”

    Perhaps expectedly, Jonathan, accompanied by his wife, Patience, showed up at the vice president’s official residence, Akinola Aguda House, to offer his condolences. Not surprisingly, he said all the soothing words, stressing particularly that “death is a journey everybody must make.” Sounding like a priest at a funeral service, he added, “We are all mere mortals. All of us are from the Earth; we must all go back to the Earth. We do not know the timing of this journey all of us must make. This world is a place where we come to play our different roles. He (Yusuf) left too early. Maybe he left when the ovation is loudest. He left at a time we needed him most. But there is nothing we can do.”

    However, it was certainly unexpected of Jonathan to introduce thoughtlessly exaggerated language in the context. He was quoted as saying that the day Capt. Sambo died was one of the saddest days for the country. It was a good example of a vacuous utterance, and it is easy to imagine that many Nigerians, faced with such information, are likely to be confused, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.

    Surely, Jonathan could have expressed his sorrow without sounding tragically theatrical. His unguarded statement, not to call it ridiculous, can be effortlessly identified for what it is, particularly against the background of the horrendous incidents of April 14 and 15. Nigerians most likely regard those days as by far sadder for the country, and incomparable with Capt. Sambo’s exit.

    Specifically, those dates refer to the Boko Haram bombing of Nyanya Motor Park in the federal capital, Abuja, which consumed at least 75 lives and injured 164 people; and the Islamist group’s   abduction of over 200 students at the Girls Senior Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, most of them still missing. Sadly, in both instances, Jonathan did not speak of these evident tragedies, which were unmistakably of greater social significance, in such superlative terms as he did in the case of Capt. Sambo’s death.

    The president’s absurd expression at the vice president’s residence showed how not to weep.

  • Owanbe prince in Aso villa

    Owanbe prince in Aso villa

    If there is any royal father in Nigeria who does not play servile to any political office holder, be he a governor, senator or president, it is the Oba of Benin. He is a man who guards the integrity and honour of the office with ancient dexterity and pride.
    So it was out of character of the Oba that his son, who is now regarded as the crown prince, to saunter into Aso Villa and scramble for a photo opportunity with the president. Sons sometimes devalue the high prestige of their fathers, and that is in the time-honored abuse of what psychologists call the oedipal complex.
    In this case, Eheneden Erediauwa, who carries the prefix of ambassador, was not the ambassador of the great and proud Benin Kingdom when he appeared with a supine smile, all clad in white cap and white dress in photo op with President Jonathan.
    The tongues of the Benin people have been restless with wonder, asking themselves why the son of the proud and doughty Oba of Benin could go to the corridor of power to dine and wine indiscriminately with power. What was he doing there? Some have asked what kind of support was he seeking from the president?
    His father is not in the habit of leaving the glorious shadow of his palace to do obeisance to anybody. The Benin Kingdom would rather be defeated than grovel, witness the story of the Benin Resistance against the English over a century ago.
    That is the reason for the Ovonranwen Square in the city. It is a homage to the honour and pride of a race that plays no second fiddle to any potentate.
    Not long ago, the story was told of the visit of the President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, to the palace in the run up to the last governorship election. With the president’s usual cavalcade of several men, vain and glorious, was the Peoples Democratic Party’s governorship candidate. The president wanted the support of the Oba. The Oba did not want to see the candidate and, according to the reports, he sent word that he could only see the president from inside one of his chambers. And so the president visited and he shunned the PDP flag bearer.
    It was a matter of principle. He did not believe in anything other than honour and competence. He endorsed the performance of Governor Adams Oshiomhole, and he was not one to be intimidated by the false colour and concourse of a presidential convoy. He sent a clear and unmistakable message. He was not one to be impressed by a president when such a president did not impress his people.
    Was it not the same Oba who sent a minister out of his palace after lashing him for leaving fallow the Benin-Ore express way? So, having known the father, does the son who is called an ambassador appear like an ambassador of the man who now occupies the saddle? Nada!
    The people of Benin are wondering whether they should be preparing for an antithesis of their present Oba, an Owambe prince preening in the vortex of power in self-prophesy of his own reign?

  • After the wedding

    Even as they enjoy their honeymoon, President Goodluck Jonathan’s daughter, Faith Sakwe, and her husband Godswill Osim, who wedded on April 12 must still be in a daze, considering the overwhelmingly spectacular show that the nuptial ceremony turned out to be, despite apparent tension in the political environment. Apart from the cream of political players, particularly those associated with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose predictable attendance added colour to the event, there was the captivating presence of high-profile spiritual leaders, which spoke volumes about the overpowering influence of the secular world.

    If matrimonial success could be guaranteed by the sheer involvement of eminent clerics in the solemnisation of the marriage, it may be envisaged that this particular couple will live happily ever after. According to reports, top on the list of prominent men of God who officiated during the wedding service at the National Christian Centre, Abuja, were Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners’ Chapel, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh of the Anglican Communion and John Cardinal Onayeikan of the Abuja Diocese of the Catholic Church. This eclectic composition suggested that the organisers of the wedding were determined to achieve comprehensive spiritual cover, perhaps believing that the more high-powered priests at the event, the greater the possibility of a harmonious relationship between husband and wife.

    However, although the organisers can be excused for thinking like flesh and blood, it is food for thought that these respected clergymen seemed to betray such superficiality that is at odds with their spiritual calling. What was the purpose of the overload? Was it necessary? The fact that they cooperated with the organisers could be interpreted to mean that they did not give sufficient thought to the possible negative perception of their collective presence and the likely reading of it as sycophantic by members of the public. Or, perhaps, such reflections just didn’t matter to them.

    Interestingly, this episode again demonstrated the tendency of the politically powerful to be selective in their application of the essence of religion. It would appear that to this class religion is useful, for instance, as a means of cementing marital relationships or for providing spiritual protection, or for attracting divine blessings. What about its implied influence as a promoter of decency? Perhaps, not surprisingly, the ceremony and connected happenings generated controversy about the limits of propriety.

    It is worth mentioning that following public accusations of extravagance and insensitive exhibition of opulence at the wedding, reflected particularly in the reported gifts of multiple posh cars for the couple and the amazing scale of souvenirs available, including customised iPads, the president’s defenders said the public purse had nothing to do with the splash.

    “Actually, a lot of the things you saw on the day of the wedding as gifts and souvenirs were donated by well-wishers from different parts of the world,” a member of the first family, Chief Esther Gbonkumo, was quoted as saying.

    Just two questions for her: Can we have an idea of what President Jonathan himself spent on the celebration of love, and where did the money come from, please?